34 CIVITAS DEI CH.

questions involved. So certain are these laws that
astronomers are able to predict the movement of
heavenly bodies to a nicety. The human mind con-
stantly craves to be equally certain about the mean-
ing of life. The doctrine of authority, that essential
truths about life and God cannot be reached by men
for themselves but must be revealed through super-
natural means, is really the product of this craving.
The theory ignores the fact that this craving for
certainty could not be satisfied without destroying in
men the freedom which makes them men and more
than the animals. Men are free only because each
man is left to judge in the light of his own reason and
conscience what the ultimate verities are. In making
that judgment it will help him to study what others
have thought and said on the subject. But he must
judge for himself who are the thinkers who think
most deeply, and also how far what they have said is
true. If he cannot judge for himself how far what
Moses and the prophets wrote was true, a man re-
turned from the grave cannot help him to judge.

But why should he face this irksome task from
which the human spirit'recoils? The answer is that
he cannot escape from action, and so from deciding
how to act. Such decisions, unless taken by instinct,
as an animal takes them, involve finding answers to
questions which never can be answered with cer-
tainty. Unless he is prepared to answer such ques-
tions for himself he abandons his human status and
reverts to a life on the plane of the beasts.

The secular conflict of church and state has its
roots in the doctrine of authority. The Catholic
Church, divinely inspired, pronounces that Jesus
forbade divorce, except for the cause of adultery
and that persons divorced may not marry again.
The experience of centuries under changing social
conditions reveals a number of evils to which the
rigid enforcement of this ordinance leads. Common-